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Jak and Daxter Wiki:Bulletin board/Interview with Dallas Robinson
On April 15, 2018, our own User:Thatawesomecat conducted an interview over email with Dallas Robinson, an environment artist formerly at High Impact Games who worked on Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier in 2009. The exchange was reviewed, edited, and transcribed below on April 17, 2018, and may be used as a wiki-wide reference. Note that some minor refactoring, omission, and editing was done with permission for presentation. Interview ; I know that The Lost Frontier was switched from Naughty Dog to High Impact pretty early on in development. Any details about the transition? How much of the game was complete at that point? : R: Development of this game was a while ago, so I'm trying to remember all the details. But from what I recall, this is what happened: As stated yes, development was switched to us really early on. Naughty Dog only had one playable level fully fleshed out from what I remember, and I think one cutscene. They may have had one airship level as well, but don't quote me on that. So they basically had only proof of concept for Sony. The level I do remember was a ground level, and it was very similar to the intro of the game that we made. We wanted to mimic that test level as closely as possible. : A lot of the core story ideas were there from the start. The whole sky pirate idea was Naughty Dog's; eco running out was a Naughty Dog idea I believe; the idea that the Precursors just never finished making the planet was a Naughty Dog idea. I will say that Dark Daxter was a High Impact idea, so yeah, if you're not a fan of that you can blame us! Lol! I'm looking at you, YouTuber SuperButterBuns. ;-) Jak's eco powers (like the rocket boost jump thing) were a High Impact idea as well. Oh! Some locations were directly from Naughty Dog concept art. The airship graveyard is one I can remember. ; Did you guys get any specific directives from anybody at ND in terms of continuity, character idiosyncrasies, etc., or was it pretty much left up to you guys? : R: For the most part, Naughty Dog was really hands-off during development. They would pop in from time to time, but other than that we mostly just did our own thing. They were busy with Uncharted, and we had to make the game in a short amount of time compared to the other two games we made, so some sections feel rushed. As for characters, I don't know. I was an environment artist so that wasn't my department. ; There's really next to no info about the development of this game. Do you have any particularly interesting stories during development, whether it be something that pertained to you or to the studio as a whole? : R: I don't really have any interesting stories per se. Sorry about that. Overall, I just remember it being a pretty straightforward process outside of having less time than usual on development. I do remember one time, the art director from Naughty Dog came by and was really helpful in teaching us better ways to make very detailed levels when you're under a tight restrictions because of hardware and engine. (Oh! Btw, no, we were not using Naughty Dog's PSP engine. We were using our own. A bit obvious, but because of this limitation we couldn't mimic what they were doing completely.) : You see, up until that point we favored textures over geometry for our previous two games. So simple blocky geometry but lots of textures to keep it interesting. Plus our R&C style was just flatter in general. Naughty Dog at the time leaned towards more geometry and less textures. This allows you to make really interesting geometry that looks more detailed but really is just using a handful of textures. Then you bake your lighting and on top of that go in and hand vertex paint the rest. It's why the lighting in Jak games is so good. We were also given a complete file directory of the other PSP game Daxter to look at for reference from Ready at Dawn. They use the same technique to great success, and it's also why the PSP God of War games look so good as well. Looking back it's a pity we couldn't get closer to those looks but we just physically couldn't without more time and more development of our own engine :-/ ; During game prototyping, I know that a lot of stuff tends to be cut or removed before the final version is released. Was there anything noteworthy that you can remember that was removed from the finished product? : R: Hmm, as for what was cut... Gosh... I really don't remember. I would have to sit down and play it again or watch a Let's Play. I may do that and write back to you. : I can tell you though, the animation team we had was one of the best I have ever worked with. Many of them went to Blizzard and work on Overwatch and Blizzard cinematics (basically the Overwatch shorts and WoW teasers). It's fun to know that I worked with the guy who animated D.Va. One guy even worked for Laika, the stop motion studio. End interview. We would like to thank Dallas Robinson for his willingness and professionalism throughout the whole process, and his permission to transcribe the interview here!